Thursday, 12 March 2015

Currently Shelia Hicks is exhibiting her work there. Her Foray Into Chromatic Zones. A 'foray' into colour. In this exhibition I can't decide which meaning she's going for. An 'attempt' or a 'visit'? You get to do both, to visit and to try colour out for yourself.

She works with textiles, or 'supple materials' as she likes to call them.

These are pretty supple.

For 60 years Shelia Hicks has worked with fibres.

Producing fibre based calligraphy,

drawing with mohair on rice paper.

And weaving panels on small picture frame style looms,

incorporating found materials from her travels.

She calls these 'minimes' and describes them as pages of her diary.
Having done weaving at art college,
I know that these are no quick reflections, jotting down thoughts at the end of each day.
Weaving takes a long time.

Before you start thinking, 'yeah, isn't weaving a bit 1970s, not particularly cutting edge?' Hicks was sought after by Modernist architects. In 1967 she was commissioned to make wall panels for the Ford Foundation building in New York. These are not them, but are modelled on replacements made in 2014.

The originals were 'damaged in situ'.

Having read that the building had a 12-storey glass atrium,

I'm guessing that the culprit was light.

Originally produced in the sixties, the design looks so old yet so new.

I say 'old' reservedly, they were first made the year I was born and I'm not old!

Shelia Hicks studied under Josef Albers, a master of colour, who taught about and wrote 'Interaction with Colour'. I've mentioned him before, here, more weaving, rugs at Somerset House, Form Through Colour.

In the Sunset Pavilion, part of the Hayward Project Space,
Hicks provides us with a room full of colour to play with,
in the form of 'bales of pigmented fibre'.

Invited to 'interact with and immerse ourselves in colour', it seemed rude not to.
How often do you go to an exhibition wearing just the right coat?

About Me

I have written this blog in order to share my experiences of visiting museums, galleries and heritage sites with my family & friends. After going to museums and galleries, I often come home wanting to tell the stories about what I have seen to family and friends to encourage them to visit too. This blog allows me to do that. I thought that perhaps there are others who might be interested and be inspired to visit too. My approach is to talk about the objects, the art-e-facts, rather than the museums and galleries in general. Stories about, and visitor responses to objects fascinate me. These stories may be told by the museums themselves, the people I visit with or, on some occasions, other visitors. I am at IOE doing a PhD researching family/intergenerational learning in museums and galleries. This blog will generally be London-centric as I live and study here, but I try to visit other places when I’m visiting family & friends around the country. If you can recommend museums, galleries or heritage sites, please get in touch. kalston18@gmail.com.